These herbivorous reptiles lived in the late Triassic, about 216 million year ago. They were the biggest of the dinosaurs, still a recent group then. However, compared to many later dinosaur species they were small with their 5 to 9 meter.

Many people, including many children, had come to see the reconstruction. After an hour, the head and other parts had been attached to the skeleton. Only the end of its tail was not yet where it should be.

People who had participated in the digging for these dinosaurs, like Martijn Guliker and Ben Pabst from Switzerland, were present to reply to questions from the audience.

They showed the hammers they had used. And pillows, for making digging while kneeling on rock more comfortable.

I asked Martijn whether, besides plateosaurus, other species had beenn discovered. Some carnivorous dinosaur teeth, he replied. Too little to conclude much from. And some lungfish teeth. Maybe the lungfish had been dragged along in a flood which killed the plateosaurs and covered them with mud.

Why so little plant fossils, and so many plateosaurus fossils? Because the plateosaurus always lived in a desert with very few plants? Problematic for such a big herbivorous animal. Because they were migrating through an area with few plants when mass death surprised them? Or because conditions for plants fossilizing there were not as good as for dinosaurs fossilizing there?

That egg is exhibited now in the museum along with the tool with which it was extracted. The researchers found the egg on the biggest island of the archipelago, Selvagen grande, on what is now rock, but was a beach when it was laid. During the TV program about the discovery of the egg, it was suggested it belonged to a species, ancestral to the petrels nesting on Selvagen grande now.

However, petrels mainly nest in holes between rocks or in the ground. While birds like terns and plovers nest on beaches.

The scientists do not know yet which Miocene bird species laid the egg. They will do more research, by comparing the egg to other eggs already in the museum collection, by scanning, etc.

The box failed to break apart in mid-air and landed on top of the girl who died later in hospital. …

Leaflet drops have been used extensively in Afghanistan by US and British forces in the battle to win the “hearts and minds” of the local population.

The MoD would not comment on what type of leaflet was involved, but past leaflets have included information about the election campaign, mine awareness campaigns, and warnings of impending military action in an area

Some of the leaflet drops over Helmand involve black propaganda campaigns aimed at the Taleban. These are part of psychological warfare missions.

Reactions on the Times site [Update October 2010: no longer available at the Times site]:

Jon Barrett wrote:

We don’t even know her name.

Shameful.

Marcus Holyoak wrote:

Great – you drop litter in Singapore, you get hauled off by the police; drop litter in the UK you get a spot fine of £50; drop litter in Afghanistan, a girl loses her life, a family lose their daughter, and you get told keep up the good work. It’s not right.

S K wrote:

Another needless death in what can only be described as a pointless war. Why are our troops still there again? Why are we even involved?

Paul Kingsley wrote:

If this happened in June, just how long does it take to investigate why a box didn’t open? What they really mean is we had forgotten abut it until the press asked about it?

The most senior American diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistan appears to have been forced out of his post after failing to secure an investigation into claims of widespread fraud favouring Hamid Karzai in the August presidential elections: here.